By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 11.11.2010 (The Sydney Morning Herald): Few business editors would contemplate becoming an entrepreneur, but six years ago Mike Hall stepped out of a 20-year career as a journalist to launch a design-led textile business catering to the high end of the market.

“When I started out, I couldn’t tell the difference between silk and cotton, but now I can hold my own in a conversation about weft and warp, empire lines and stitches per inch,“ says Hall, whose company Jasmine Hall wholesales home textiles and fashion.

While working in Singapore as the bureau chief for international news agency Bloomberg, responsible for a team of 60 reporters and editors, Hall realised he had become more of a manager than a journalist. He decided to move back to Sydney, and set up a business importing from India, a country that had become a second home during his years of reporting from the sub-continent.

He made a list of about 300 different products and landed in Mumbai. “A good friend there who had some experience in retailing kept saying to me ‘do textiles’ because they are easy to ship and store, high value, low volume, and India has such an amazing diversity of textiles to offer.”

Hall’s friend put him in touch with the Shades of India factory in Delhi, who happened to be looking for an Australian distributor.

“My first order was for four red silk cushion covers which arrived by courier – and I was in business!” he says.

From one customer in 2004, Jasmine Hall’s decorative cushions, bed linen, clothing and fashion accessories, are now sold at top boutiques such as Orson & Blake in Sydney and Hermon & Hermon in Melbourne.

The company, named after Hall’s daughter, now has more than 300 retail stockists and another 200 interior designers as active customers across the country. It also has two permanent employees, sales agents in every state and a warehouse and showroom in Mona Vale. Hall is budgeting on sales of more than $1 million for next year.

But the transition from journalist to textile salesman wasn’t easy. While Hall loved the challenge of meeting prospective customers and showing them new things, he soon realised it was easier to make appointments as a journalist rather than a salesman.

However he was able to apply many of the skills he had learnt as a journalist.

“Ultimately, business is about being able to deal with people, build a relationship of trust – just as a journalist might do with a source.”

It was a huge learning curve for Hall as he mastered skills from sales to inventory management. He decided to focus on the top end of the market and now works with designers in India to develop new ranges using traditional skills and techniques. The contemporary products are designed to appeal globally.

“I wanted to work with contemporary products that had a story to tell and I was inspired by the idea of skilled artisans and designers combining to push the boundaries of hand-crafted textiles”.

Having spent years reporting from India and Africa, Hall could see the social and economic benefits of labour intensive manufacturing.

“Our bedcovers, for example, are hand-quilted in village centres outside Delhi by women who might otherwise have been landless labourers. Now they earn a steady income and can send their kids to school and build a home. There are real social benefits from trade”.

Recently, Hall launched his own bed linen and accessories brand, Secret River, inspired by water.

“My childhood was spent near the Shire River and Lake Malawi in Africa,” he says.

“I now live on Scotland Island in Pittwater, north of Sydney. Proximity to water has been a big thing in my life”.

Hall says good quality products and customer service help give his business an edge in what is a very competitive market.

Customer service is something he says he learned from Bloomberg founder Mike Bloomberg, now the mayor of New York. “I spent three days with him in India and although he was a billionaire with a private jet, he would always take the time to thank customers for their business. He had this philosophy of extreme customer service – nothing is too much trouble.”

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